We applaud the Mr Pearce and the Alamogordo Daily News reporter Karl Anderson for continuing to bring us the truth on the wolf program in the southwest.

Representative says wolf reintroduction is ‘ineffective’
Alamogordo Daily News
By Karl Anderson, Staff Writer
Article Launched: 12/20/2007 12:00:00 AM MST
Rep. Stevan Pearce is expressing his discontent with regards to the direction the Mexican gray wolf recovery program is heading in New Mexico.

“I am disappointed more of my colleagues could not see the wisdom in eliminating an unsuccessful, ineffective program that has not only failed to produce results, but also threatens the lives and livelihoods of New Mexicans,” he said. “We have tried the reintroduction program for 10 years and have seen only growing problems and more wolf-human interactions.”

Pearce said he believes the time has come to concede that wolves cannot successfully be reintroduced into New Mexico, and is disappointed Congress has not yet reached that view.

“I will continue working to ensure that we are protected from these captive-bred habituated wolves,” he said. “The Fish and Wildlife Service must take active steps to better manage problem wolves and guarantee that farmers, ranchers, their families, and their livestock are not repeatedly stalked and attacked.

“I will furthermore continue working to educate my colleagues with regards to the problems associated with this program.”

Pearce said the vote by Congress this past June to continue the recovery program was a setback. The congressman said he intends to put more pressure on those who he believes have only wasted tax dollars and created what he termed “a menace within our communities.”
“We have people in the Second District that can’t check their mail without taking a pistol to the mailbox for fear of being attacked,” Pearce said. “Without a federal compensation program for our ranchers, they are forced to bear the cost of lost livestock. They depend on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to manage the wolves off their livestock and property. “Unfortunately, the Service has proven that they are incapable or protecting the ranchers of the Second District from the growing number of captive-bred, habituated, problem wolves in the recovery program.”

But according to Eva Sargent, Southwest director for Defenders of Wildlife, the non-profit agency has and continues to reimburse ranchers for losses suffered by wolves.

“We have paid out nearly $100,000 since 1998,” she said in a recent interview. “That amount represents what we paid out collectively between 25 and 30 ranches, all of which were in New Mexico, Arizona or on the White Mountain Apache Reservation.”

Sargent said the program replaces specific animals.

“We pay fair market value,” she said. “If someone loses a heifer, for example, it replaces that heifer. So it replaces an animal that could have produced young with another that can produce young.”

“The congressman is familiar with that program,” said Brian Phillips, press secretary for Pearce. “The congressman has received feedback that tells us ranchers are not very happy with that program.”

Pearce said since its inception, the Mexican gray wolf reentry program has spent more than $14 million and released just 59 wolves at a cost of over $237,000 per wolf.

“This year, one out of every five of those wolves will be deemed ‘problem wolves’ and require that the (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) hunt them down and removed them from the wild. The USFWS also spent additional resources on educating residents on how to protect themselves if they encounter wolves on their property.”

Pearce cited several reports he received from constituents who have witnessed numerous attacks by wolves.

“I have pictures of wolf tracks leading up to a corral right by someone’s house,” he said. “I have seen the bloody carcasses of livestock that have been attacked and eaten.

“We need to approach the problem with a little common sense.

“In the meantime, we shouldn’t be wasting more and more resources on a failed program that puts people’s lives and livelihoods in danger.”

Orginal Story

Soils do need to be disturbed for proper germination to take place.  Cattle grazing and providing manure and the soil disruption needed would go far to helping this program.  Fires would have also been smaller as they have been in historical past if cattle were allowed to properly graze. 

Reduce grazing and fires will increase.  You must remove the fuels or nature will and the carbon will be released one way or another.   I do think it is wonderful that people are out collecting seeds and helping to replant.

By Patrick O’Driscoll, USA TODAY - orginal story 

MOUNTAIN HOME, Idaho — Months after huge rangeland wildfires scorched millions of acres of the interior West, the recovery of its vast sagebrush may depend on volunteers such as Rachel Morgan and Angie Robles.

The friends from Caldwell, Idaho, taking a “moms’ day out” Saturday, joined more than 70 other unpaid helpers to pluck and bag the ripe brown stems off waist-high sagebrush in the foothills 50 miles southeast of Boise. Hundreds more volunteers from the Idaho Fish and Game Department will follow in the coming weeks, including Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter, who issued an unusual plea last month for help gathering seeds to restore fire-damaged areas.

“One day, hopefully, my kids will be able to go wherever these are planted and do the same thing,” says Morgan, 31, who likens the task to Halloween trick-or-treating. “You just wait for your bag to get fuller and fuller and fuller.”

Regional campaign

She has a bit part in a regionwide, multimillion-dollar campaign this fall and winter to replant as much sagebrush and other native plants as possible. Parts of Idaho, Utah, Nevada and Oregon suffered extreme wildfires this summer over large expanses of the coarse, silver-gray shrub. Sagebrush anchors the natural ecosystem of the Great Basin, an arid, 200,000-square-mile area between the Sierra and the Rockies.

Using canvas hoppers, work gloves and even tennis rackets, volunteer and paid gatherers comb unburned zones from Duchesne, Utah, to Spring Valley, Nev., to gather more than 2 million pounds of sagebrush seeds that are smaller than cracked pepper. Land managers also will spread millions of pounds of seeds of other grasses, wildflowers and plants.

“Even though people think it’s vast and widespread, it’s one of the most endangered ecosystems in North America,” says Scott Lambert, national seed coordinator for the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which oversees much of the burned landscape. “If we don’t do anything, the weeds will just become worse, and that’s all we’ll have in a few years.”

Sagebrush has dominated the region for eons in varieties ranging from the cushion-like pygmy to “big sagebrush” that sprouts up to 10 feet. A fast-growing intruder called cheatgrass began to disrupt it in the late 19th century. Cheatgrass, which dries quickly and becomes highly flammable, fuels frequent wildfires. That prevents sagebrush from re-establishing on its own and threatens the landscape, agriculture and 130 species of wildlife that depend on sagebrush for food, shelter and cover. Today, cheatgrass dominates more than 25 million acres formerly filled with sagebrush.

Last summer, more than 4,240 square miles of the Great Basin — an area about half the size of New Jersey — burned in the worst fires in nearly a decade in the region. One Utah blaze, the 344,000-acre Milford Flat fire, was the largest in state history and burned for more than two months. The 1,020-square-mile Murphy Complex fires, centered about 115 miles southeast of here, were Idaho’s biggest in 97 years.

“There’s so much sagebrush steppe country that has burned, it is very distressing, frankly,” says Mary Dudley, coordinator of volunteers for Idaho Fish and Game. “We’re losing a lot of the seed source. So we’re making a bigger effort this year because of the scope of the fires.”

In central Utah, state and federal agencies reseed areas damaged by the Milford Flat fire with grasses and plants such as Indian rice grass, mountain bromme, blue flax and crested wheatgrass. Native shrubs — sagebrush, fourwing saltbush and bitterbrush — will follow. Total cost: at least $17 million.

Expanded efforts

“This is probably the biggest challenge we’ve ever had,” says Jason Vernon, habitat development coordinator for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. “Our biggest previous year, we planted 700,000 pounds of seed. This year, it’s 2 million pounds.”

The need is so great that the agency plans to double the size of its 20,000-square-foot seed warehouse next spring.

The sagebrush fires were part of the USA’s second-worst wildfire season in more than a half-century. Almost 9.4 million acres have burned this year, a little less than the 9.8 million acres in 2006.

Restoration this year is not limited to sagebrush plains. Land agencies also reseed parts of the Mohave Desert in California and southern Nevada that burned in 2004, 2005 and 2006.

In Southern California, emergency stabilization teams try to help nature restore itself where last month’s fierce brushfires charred a half-million acres around San Diego and metropolitan Los Angeles. Native plants that fed the California blazes, such as chaparral and manzanita, should return on their own if the ground is undisturbed, U.S. Forest Service soil scientist Todd Ellsworth says.

Reseeding here remains a year-to-year fight because invasive weeds threaten to overtake the Great Basin ecosystem. Commercial seed collectors are so numerous this fall after the fires that poaching is becoming a problem. Gatherers must have permits on public land and usually sign contracts with private landowners.

“It’s almost like prospecting in a way — and you get the same kind of lawlessness,” says Zachary Sherman, 29, a seed collector from Orem, Utah. He recently had to chase intruders off ranches near Elko, Nev., where he pays owners 5-10 cents a pound for the right to harvest three varieties. The seed fetches $1-$3 a pound from processors, who can make up to $16 a pound for “clean” seed — a mix of 16% seed in fine chaff that is spread via helicopter or airplane.

“Demand is at nearly an all-time high,” says Kyle Wagstaff of Native Seed in Park City, Utah, which supplies 250,000 pounds of sagebrush seed a year to the government and private customers. “Sagebrush is in decline all over its range.”

Prolonged heat and dryness have stressed sagebrush “so it’s not producing as much seed as it would in a normal year,” says BLM range ecologist Mike Pellant, coordinator of the Great Basin Restoration Initiative, a research effort to repair the ecosystem.

Sherman, one of Wagstaff’s suppliers, evokes stares and police calls when neighbors notice the tool of his trade: a tennis racket.

His 10 crewmembers use the rackets to knock seed-bearing blossoms into sacks. Wagstaff says he buys 200-300 rackets a year for his contractors.

Volunteers here stripped the plants by hand this past weekend. They dropped the fuzzy brown clumps, sticky with resin, into the wide-mouthed hoppers.

Retired social worker Carolyn Kershaw, 66, drove more than 100 miles from eastern Oregon to join the effort.

“I like sagebrush,” she whispers. “Being out here, touching it, smelling it. People that aren’t from the West don’t think so much of sagebrush. But it holds us together.”

Wolves dominate coyotes when co-existing

NEW YORK, Sept. 12 (UPI) — A U.S. study has confirmed the theory that wolves will become the dominant species in areas in which both wolves and coyotes co-exist.

Research by the Wildlife Conservation Society suggests coyote densities might be more than 30 percent lower in areas that they share with wolves.

“The study tests the hitherto unproven hypothesis that wolves limit the range and numbers of coyotes in places where the two species compete with one another,” said Kim Murray Berger, a WCS researcher and lead author of the study. “In this instance, the findings do support the theory, but coyotes can hold their own against wolves by living in packs.”

The researchers — working in Grand Teton National Park in the southern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem — followed radio-collared coyotes at wolf-abundant and wolf-free locations. They found that while coyotes remained the numerically dominant predator in locations where wolves exist, the densities of coyotes was substantially lower in areas containing both canid species.

Specifically, coyote densities were 33 percent lower in wolf-abundant sites in the Tetons. Similarly, coyote densities declined 39 percent in Yellowstone National Park after wolves were recently reintroduced there.

The study is reported in the Journal of Animal Ecology.

Larry Pynn, Vancouver Sun

Published: Wednesday, August 01, 2007

A kayaker’s life-and-death struggle with a hungry wolf on B.C.’s remote north coast — the second wolf attack in the province in seven years, and the first thought to involve predatory intent — has prompted a conservation officer to warn against taking wolf encounters too lightly.

“This was a predatory wolf attack,” conservation officer James Zucchelli confirmed in an interview from his Bella Coola Valley office. “That fellow was perceived as a prey source. He was attacked with intent to eat. The wolf saw him and took off running at him.”

Zucchelli cautioned against public alarm since such incidents are extremely rare, adding he’s not heard of another predatory attack during his eight years as a conservation officer. But he said the attack reinforces the fact that wolves are predators and capable of attacking humans under certain circumstances, including when they are desperate for food.

The fit, 31-year-old Port Moody kayaker was setting up his tent on a beach at 4 p.m. in the Anderson Islands off northwest Aristazabal Island, a straight-line distance of about 125 km north of Bella Bella, when an old female wolf emerged from the bushes and attacked, Zucchelli said.

The kayaker fought with the wolf for a few long minutes, suffering bites to his leg and hands as he attempted to pry its jaws apart and put it in a headlock.

He eventually dragged himself and the wolf several metres down the beach to his kayak, removed a 10-cm knife from his life jacket, and repeatedly stabbed the animal.

“He proceeds to start filling this thing with holes in the neck and chest area,” Zucchelli said. “The wolf gives up, gurgling and bleeding, and wanders off into the trees.”

Unable to paddle due to his hand injuries, the kayaker called for help on his marine radio.

Employees from the floating King Salmon Resort at Borrowman Bay, about seven km to the southeast, arrived to remove him and his gear from the island and locate the dying wolf in the nearby bushes, killing it with a shotgun blast to the head.

The Canadian Coast Guard vessel Tanu took the kayaker to hospital in Bella Bella, where he was treated and released. Zucchelli returned to the island and spotted a lone wolf on the shoreline that circled the area of the attack and then disappeared into the bush.

Subsequent tests on the dead wolf showed it did not have rabies, but was emaciated at just 25 kg. A healthy female wolf should weigh closer to 40 kg. The stomach contents included the jaw of a river otter, a feather, and bones from a rat fish scavenged from the beach.

“There was nothing good in [the wolf’s] stomach — shrapnel off the beach,” Zucchelli said.

A man was severely bitten by a wolf in 2000 while sleeping outdoors in his sleeping bag at Vargas Island in Clayoquot Sound. He received more than 50 stitches to his scalp. Two young wolves who had a history of being fed by humans were killed.

That doesn’t appear to be the case in this latest incident, which occurred July 5 but is only now coming to light. “There was no indication of any feeding or garbage, that anything had been placed on a regular basis on that little patch of beach to suggest a wolf attractant,” Zucchelli said.

“This wasn’t a beach used on a regular basis. There was no fire pit. There is no evidence these wolves had been fed by humans, period. There was nothing.”Zucchelli still plans to conduct follow-up talks with north coast fishing lodges to reinforce the importance of not feeding wild animals.

The kayaker, who was on a four-week solo trip from southeast Alaska to northern Vancouver Island, asked not to be identified or interviewed, saying he doesn’t need the publicity and is concerned that news of the rare incident will only give wolves a bad image.

The Ministry of Environment estimates there is a stable or growing population of 8,000 wolves in the province.

A 2002 study by Mark McNay of the Alaska department of fish and game documented 80 cases in which wolves showed little fear of humans in Alaska and Canada over the past century.  His study documented 39 cases of aggression from healthy wolves (six involving humans with dogs), 12 of known or suspected rabies, and 29 cases of fearless but non-aggressive behaviour. Aggressive non-rabid wolves bit people in 16 cases, six of them severe. He could find no evidence of wolves having killed people.

McNay’s report estimates there are 52,000 to 60,000 wolves in Canada and 7,000 to 10,000 in Alaska.

lpynn@png.canwest.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 orginal story

By Dave Cogdill - Special To The Bee

Published 12:00 am PDT Friday, July 20, 2007 

Once again, catastrophic fire has left its devastating footprint on our California landscape.

It seems that this time every year, we find ourselves in the same precarious situation of watching our hillsides get drier and drier while the summer gets hotter and hotter, until a fire erupts and we scramble to contain it and minimize its effect. Once the fire’s been put out and things return to normal (for the most part), we do little to prevent future fires. Then summer hits once again and we’re back to square one. It’s time we put an end to this cycle.

This reality has never been as evident as with the Angora fire that devastated the South Lake Tahoe area. A drier than usual winter, low humidity, illegal campfires, wind gusts and an abundance of undergrowth all served as catalysts that fed the fire.

The existing hands-off approach is simply not acceptable — suppression alone is a flawed policy whereby forest fires are merely put out and there isn’t enough active forest management. This policy has resulted in the Lake Tahoe basin having twice as many trees as normally would be sustained. As a result of certain crippling environmental laws regarding forestry, this calamity has endangered our families, children and firefighters, destroyed hundreds of homes and displaced thousands of residents, threatened our air and water quality, and caused millions of dollars of damage to the Lake Tahoe region.

There is a group of people who tend to the more extreme side of environmentalism, who insist upon stricter air quality regulations on industries and agriculture, and yet endorse policies such as an arbitrary limit on the size of trees that can be removed from our forests and the exclusion of biomass (converting forest waste into usable energy) as a form of alternative fuel. These are the same policies that have led to overgrown, dense forests that act as “powder kegs,” as termed by Thomas Bonnicksen, a professor at Texas A&M and an expert on forestry and forest management. Once that powder keg is ignited and a runaway wildfire ensues, unheard of amounts of carbon are dumped into our air, completely undermining any progress made in improving air quality.

This year, I introduced two pieces of legislation aimed at addressing the connection between our forests, responsible forestry management, air pollution and wildfire protection. Sen ate Bill 572 would have required the State Air Resources Board, when implementing the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, to take into due consideration the emissions created by catastrophic wildfire as well as the air benefits created by a well-managed forest.

Senate Bill 838 would have funded community-based wildfire threat reduction and prevention programs, such as fire safe councils, which preserve and enhance California’s resources and mobilize Californians to protect their homes, communities and environment from wildfires.

In 1997, the California Forestry Association published a report titled, “Lake Tahoe … the Pearl in Peril.” In that piece, the association calls for greater management of the precious Tahoe forest and quotes a former chief of the U.S. Forest Service, Jack Ward Thomas, as saying, following the 1994 fire season: “We cannot, in my opinion, simply step back and wait for ‘nature’ to take its course. I do not believe that what has happened this fire season is acceptable as a solution to the problem. These fires at this scale and intensity, are too hot, destructive, dangerous and too ecologically, economically, aesthetically and socially damaging to be tolerable.”

Here we are, 13 years after Thomas issued his admonition, and what do we have to show for it? Yet another scorched mountain in the Lake Tahoe region, 250 destroyed homes, 3,500 displaced and scared people, erosion from wildfire threatening the pristine lake and millions of dollars lost due to damages and the cost of fighting fires. It’s time to move beyond environmental absurdity and to start taking our forests and their management more seriously.

full story Sac Bee

Wolf-plan hearing

By LARRY KLINE, IR Staff Writer - 07/19/07

Wildlife advocates in a hearing Wednesday night spoke out against a proposed revision of federal wolf-management rules, calling the changes an unnecessary shift that would result in more dead predators.
Several supporters said the potential rewrite would allow more flexibility for wolf management and offer residents greater protection for their property.
The revision proposed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service includes two changes:

• Citizens could kill wolves in the act of attacking dogs or stock animals — horses, mules, donkeys or llamas used as transport or pack animals — while on public land or private property.
• States and tribes with approved wolf-management plans would be allowed to kill wolves if they could show the predators are a major contributor to declining numbers in distinct game herds.

Opponents decried the changes, which they said would enable states to use the predators as scapegoats for any decline in game herds — ignoring other factors such as habitat loss and climate change.

“Any provision that kills a wild animal for eating its natural prey does not make sense,” said Lisa Upson of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Resident Lawrence McEvoy said the changes left little burden of proof.

“I am opposed to any rule that would allow any private citizen to shoot a wolf on-sight and then assert it was trying to kill their dog,” he said.
full story Independent Record

By Mountain Mail staff
SOCORRO, New Mexico (STPNS) — The Catron County Commission on Thursday issued a “24 Hour Notice of Intent to Remove Mexican wolf Durango AF924″ to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“This family and the County have tried to get FWS to remove that wolf for two months,” said Ed Wehrheim, chairman of the Catron County Commission.

The female wolf, AF924, has been stalking the ranch house of Mark and Debbie Miller in a remote area of the Gila National Forest since its release into the wild in late April. Catron County manager Bill Aymar said federal wolf biologists have documented two cattle kills by AF924. A third incident would require the agency to remove the wolf.

Mexican grey wolf, AF924, near the Adobe Ranch in Catron County

“Why would this group of people not be interested in removing her if she’s in proximity to this ranch, to calves and cows?” Aymar said. “Their own rules say three strikes and you’re out. This program isn’t even fair to the wolf. If she gets that third strike, we don’t even have to argue whether she’s hanging out. According to their rules, she’s done.”

The county has issued two letters of demand for removal of the wolf. The first cited the wolf’s past history of depredation and a report that the wolf had bitten a human. The second letter cited six incidents involving problem behavior over six weeks, all of which were reported to, investigated and confirmed by the agency, Aymar said.

“They’re not following their own rules about these habituated wolves hanging around homes and presenting a danger,” Aymar said.

The Mexican wolf recovery program guidelines provide for the removal of nuisance or problem Mexican wolves when hazing and other methods prove inadequate. In the county’s 24 Hour Notice, Aymar wrote that no action has been taken by any agency to “respond to the demand for removal, nor has any adequate action been taken by your agency or any other agency to reduce the risk to humans from AF924.”

When the family and the ranch owner each finally appealed in writing to the Catron County Commission to provide the protection they needed from the wolves, the County Commission sent the 24 Hour Notice to FWS and all the agencies involved in the wolf program.

The agency’s only response was to send law enforcement officers to observe the County’s Wolf Interaction Investigator Jess Carey, who is attempting to protect the family from any more incidents with this problem wolf.

“The Endangered Species Act supercedes county ordinances,” Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Victoria Fox said. “Any action violating the law would result in prosecution.”

She said law enforcement personnel are on the scene to make sure there’s no violation of federal law.

“We continue to work with the county, and the presence of a field team is to insure that the wolves are deterred from any other interaction with livestock,” Fox said. “We are there to take measures to move them away from human interaction or livestock. We’re trying to achieve that balance in Catron County.”

Fox also said the agency has offered a variety of tools to ranchers, including radio receivers, flag fences and radio activated guard boxes.

“All those options have been offered,” Fox said. “We’re doing everything we can and keep open communication.”

Aymar said the agency isn’t doing enough to protect ranchers and their livestock or to protect the wolves.

“They’re not being responsive to the needs of the citizens by any means,” Aymar said. “They’re just waiting to see what the county will do.”

Carey has set up camp outside the family’s house and intends to trap the wolf and turn it over to the agency. Aymar said the law enforcement officers are waiting for a court injunction for the County and the County’s investigator to cease and desist the trapping.

“Something semi-unique to this situation is that this family lives in a little cabin with an outhouse,” Aymar said. “If you have to walk between the house and the outhouse in the middle of the night with a wolf hanging around, it’s not a good thing. It’s easy for some in Santa Fe who walks down the hall to the bathroom to be critical.”

Aymar said he doesn’t expect Fish and Wildlife personnel to respond to the demand letter.

“If the Fish and Wildlife Service was to go out there and snatch up 924 and take her away, that would be tantamount to the feds saying that the Catron County ordinance is a valid legal issue,” he said. “I don’t think they’re going to do that.”

story from Small Town Papers